The challenges of communication within an increasingly diverse patient population are growing rapidly. Patients come from an ever more varied range of cultural, linguistic and socio-economic backgrounds. This increases the risk of miscommunication between the doctor and the patient and makes the need for context-bound communication skills even more relevant. There is a strong interdependence between content (what is being communicated) and process (how it is communicated). How should we communicate the medical and diagnostic information, whilst respecting the interactional and clinical reasoning aspects, when the existing language barrier is addressed by means of an interpreter participating in the medical consultation.
The Department of Translation, Terminology & Interpreting Studies is organising a public talk by Dr Demi Krystallidou (KU LEUVEN, Belgium) on Tuesday, 9 April, 15:00–17:00 at Mater Dei Hospital Lecture Room 4/5 Block C level 1.
The talk will focus on the aspects of working with an interpreter in the medical setting. She will be discussing the interpreter’s role in the clinical communication and what healthcare professionals should know when holding interpreter-mediated consultations.
Dr Demi Krystallidou is a postdoctoral researcher in interpreter-mediated clinical communication. Her research interests are:
- empathic communication in interpreter-mediated medical consultations.
- inter-professional education (IPE) between interpreting- and medical students.
- doctor-patient communication in interpreter-mediated consultations with migrant cancer patients.
Dr Demi Krystallidou is the co-chair the Special Interest Group (SIG) ‘Language and cultural discordance in healthcare communication’ of the International Association for Communication in Healthcare (EACH) and a member of pEACH. She has been publishing her work in international peer-reviewed journals with an interest in interpreter-mediated clinical communication, she has been presenting her research in international conferences and has been giving guest lectures in the field of Interpreting Studies and Clinical Communication. She has designed and evaluated the first inter-professional educational initiative in Flanders between medical and interpreting students (in collaboration with Prof. dr. Peter Pype, MD, Ghent University). She is currently developing an evidence-based inter-professional module on empathic communication in interpreter-mediated clinical communication for medical and interpreting students at KU Leuven. Demi holds a Ph.D. in Interpreting Studies (interpreter-mediated clinical communication), an M.Sc. in Conference Interpreting and an M.A. in German Language and Literature.